War Diaries of a Little Englander.
Being the toy soldier, wargaming and kit bashing ramblings of a middle-aged Englishman.

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Greetings!

'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Wednesday, 4 April 2012

The Peter Laing question

Just as the 'West Lothian question' isn't just about West Lothian, in fact, isn't about the West Lothians in any direct sense at all, so this, the 'Peter Laing question', isn't really about M. Laing (sorry, went French there - it's this Chasse du Pape wine), Mr Laing. Since my last post, and the kind comments made about it (thanks, chaps!), I've been wondering what we/I think of when I think of a 'good' figure. So, I opened my cupboard and took out a random handful of the figures therein. Being a random selection, it contained three figures with the same pose (officers with walking sticks), and, given my prediliction for light troops, three of those, and, you will be unsurprised to learn, a fellow with a clay! The selection is biased however, as they are all in 20mm or 28mm, as these sizes reflect my more recent collections, with older figures tending to 15mm. So, assuming I liked these figures enough in the first place to spend my Maria Theresas on them, what have I got:

The three chaps with walking sticks - Spencer Smith, Copplestone, and Revell. As can be seen from the paint finish, two are in the 'traditional' style, one in a more contemporary fashion (leaving on one side the satin varnish). For me, the Revell figure stands out - the officer's deportment is the thing. Nonchalant, poised, self-aware, despite the enemy's efforts to unsettle him with counter-battery fire. The Copplestone figure - the key here is that he has an individuality worthy of a first rate graphic novel. And the Spencer Smith, here tradition carries it off - he appeals to my conservatism (note, please, the lower case 'c'). Now, the light bobs:

Perry, Spencer Smith, Perry. Enough has been said about the Perrys, and I forbear to provoke, but these are two fine figures - it is their pose that does it, I think. There are strong echoes of Chappell, pere and fils, here, those two excellent illustrators who have brought so much of the Eighteenth Century alive in our Ospreys. The Spencer Smith, however, catches the eye for his animation - here is a determined fellow, debouching from the woodlands in a surprise advance on the enemy outpost.

Finally, the fellow with the clay:

Wonderful. I often pose him with one of his comrades on my star fort walls, wondering what they are doing in British North America. But, at the least, the tobacco is not in short supply.

I'm not sure what all that adds up to. There is poise, character, animation. Are these the secrets? Perhaps an analogy might be between the paintings of Charles Spencleyah and, say, Gaugin. I wouldn't mind a work by either hanging on my wall, but they are two quite different things. Horses for courses, I suppose.

4 comments:

Interesting post and comparisons- splendid chaps all in their own way. Afraid I can't recall if I sold the Legion or gave it away but it has gone .Horses for courses re figures says it all. I must say I am enjoying the gleanings from your cabinet of curiosoties- what else is lurking there? I can't wait!

Quotation of the moment

'In a sense, nothing in life is planned - or everything is - because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.'

Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World (A Dance to the Music of Time), 1955.

Cpt. Front

About Me

New Men-At-Arms

Not out until February 2018, but order your copy early - you know it makes sense!

NOW IN PAPERBACK!!!

The Home Guard - 'This is likely to be the standard reference book on the subject for many years to come'; Bernard Lowry, Fortress Study Group.

A Vanished Ideology Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World

Yiddish-speaking, English-speaking, Jews in the Communist movement. With a chapter on British Jews, ethnicity and class, by Al Front.

When Jews had a place on the Left.

The Labour Party is sunk in a mess of anti-Semitism, but it was not always thus:

Alf R. Ont on the wireless

Click on the image and scroll to 01:05:23 for the dulcet tones of Mr Ont, talking about women in the Home Guard.

Women in the Home Guard

From The Conversation, 5th February, 2016. Active, patriotic British women to the fore...

NEW BIOGRAPHY of 'FLYING' FAY TAYLOUR

277 pages of thrills and spills. 'Fanatical Fay Taylour', the greatest woman motor sports champion yet. A speed fiend on race tracks across the world, and a political activist who was banned from the USA, and interned in the UK. Member of the ultra-right underground in 1940s London and Dublin, later an Irish republican and supporter of Castro. Click image for a FREE ,yes, FREE, Pdf version provided by the University of Warwick.

Evolution and change in politics

A review of a new history of what was once a notable element of political allegiance among the Jewish diaspora. (Clink on the image for free link).

Germany calling...

The woman who recruited 'Lord Haw Haw' to the Berlin wireless. Socialist, Bolshevik, National Socialist, enemy broadcaster. (From The Historian 119; click on image for Pdf)

BBC Radio 4: Red Clydeside, Decoy Defences and Invasion panic

More Radio 4 'Making History' rambling - from 20th November 2012 (click on the image for link)

'The Land of My Dreams'

British Great War literary combatants and their writing about the war and home. A Pdf of an article from Cultural & Social History, vol. 8, no: 2, June 2011. (Click on image for link).

British Jews & the Communist Party of Great Britain

More reading for the VBCW enthusiast, not to mention the discerning reader (click on image for link). From Socialist History, vol.12, no: 41, September 2012

BBC Radio 4: Speed, women, and fascism

Listen to my dulcet tones, talking about 'Flying' Fay Taylour on BBC Radio 4's Making History (click on the image for link)

'Fay Taylour: a dangerous woman in sport and politics'

A must for the VBCW gamer - the most successful woman motor sport ace ever and a fascist. Click on image for journal link, an open access Pdf will eventually be available.

The Armourer magazine, March/April 2012

The true daughters of Britannia who joined the Home Guard

Political internment without trial, 1940 style

Fascists, nazis, and the IRA interned. Click on image for back issue of Britain At War, issue 46, Feb 2011

George Blake, literary Scot in the Great War

The Great War fiction of the veteran, George Blake - from Cencrastus no:67. Out of print, but I can send a photocopy, if you wish.

For the VBCW war gamer

In History Scotland, March/April 2011; click on image for free Pdf.

Fifth Column panic!

Buy a back issue - all that is left

The incomparable generation of 1914

from The Historian no:110, Summer 2011, magazine of The Historical Association; click on image for Pdf.

BBC Radio 4: Stand By the King!

Listen to my words of historical wisdom about the BUF in Norfolk on Radio 4's 'Making History'. Click on image for link.

One I did earlier...

Musso and the RSI

Fascism in Scotland

From the Scottish Historical Review, volume 87 (2) 2008 (click on the image for Pdf link)

Another Home Guard one...

A 50 page booklet, now out of print, but available as a pdf from Warwick University - click on the image for the link.